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German doctors angry at nuclear extension bid
Diet Simon - 27.05.2006 08:52
Berlin – Germany’s four main electricity producers have been meeting with the environment minister to try to get permission to run at least two atomic power stations longer than now set under a pact to abandon nuclear power production. The news magazine Der Spiegel has reported that in the weeks ahead the RWE and EnBW corporations plan to ask for longer running times for at least two of their nukes. The news worries German doctors grouped in Internationale Ärzte für die Verhütung des Atomkrieges, the German branch of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).
In a media release on 24 May the doctors say the German nuclear power producers met Environment Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, a Social Democrat. Any extension of running times, the doctors say, would call into question the pact between government and industry to end nuclear power production by 2023 at the latest. The agreement was negotiated by the environment minister of the previous Social Democrat-Greens government, Jürgen Trittin of The Greens.
The chair of the German IPPNW affiliate, Dr. Angelika Claussen, is angry. “Longer running times make nuclear power stations more dangerous and because of the greater danger of operational mishaps pose a great risk to the health of our citizens. Chernobyl can happen anywhere, including here in Germany.”
Claussen demands the immediate shutdown of the five nukes proved to have been most disturbance-prone: Brunsbüttel, Isar I, Philippsburg I, Biblis A and B. She says the environment ministry has the legal power to order this.
The release argues that the claims of the nuclear proponents that shutting down atomic power would increase CO2 emissions are doubly wrong. Atomic power could be completely substituted by renewable energies. At their current growth rate renewables could in ten years produce as much electricity as currently all the nukes together. The release says in 2023 solar, wind, hydro, bio and earth heat power stations could producer more than 200 terrawatt hours of power a year.
That the technology was, moreover, an export hit for German industry could recently be observed in the Far East. During the recent visit of Chancellor Angela Merkel, China and Germany signed an agreement to build solar-thermal power stations which by 2020 are to be putting out 1,000 MW.
Contact: Jörg Welke, 0049 030 – 698074-14
Internationale Ärzte für die Verhütung des Atomkrieges (IPPNW),
Körtestr. 10, 10967 Berlin,
Fax: 030-6938166, E-mail:  ippnw@ippnw.de; Internet page: www.ippnw.de
Meanwhile the best known German anti-nuclear group, the Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow Dannenberg, which fights waste dumping at Gorleben in Lower Saxony, has issued a “meeting ban” for police at the next shipment of waste later this year.
The ban is issued in the name of “Republik Freies Wendland” (Free Wendland Republic) the name given a camp of protesters who tried to stop a salt mine being dug for waste.
It’s a response to sweeping meeting bans regularly declared by police on a zone 70 kilometres long and up to one kilometre wide from Lüneburg to Gorleben, the route taken by waste transports on rail and road. The police cite questionable danger prognoses about demonstrators to impose unconstitutional bans on zones.
In explaining their planned publication the Gorleben activists now list in detail the danger prognosis around the use of nuclear power.
For the decree against the nuclear industry and the police the activists are canvassing nationwide for signatories and donors. The declaration is to be published in as many newspapers as possible before the next transport of waste to Gorleben.
The umbrella protest group, Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow Dannenberg, hopes for argumentative and financial support for its constitutional complaint filed in October 2005 against the demonstration ban zones.
The statement by the activists reads: “Ahead of every Castor transport of highly radioactive waste to the interim storage hall in Gorleben, the police publish a wide-ranging demonstration ban in the county in the local Elbe-Jeetzel-Zeitung newspaper. On as many as five (!) miniature-print pages there is an abstruse danger prognosis cobbled together from isolated past incidents, meant to serve as justification for the special-law zone Gorleben, which impacts everyone. Courts are regularly ruling these demonstration bans to be illegal. But this always happens after the Castor transports, but even that has not prevented the authorities from digging into the box of legal tricks at the next Castor transport to declare yet another ban.”
The activists’ statement goes on: “We’re sick of playing this game. So we’re now turning the tables. Before the next Castor transport we will publish our ‘ban’ on transports of atomic waste radiating lethally for thousands of years, and against police deployments against our own population unworthy of a democracy. We have good reasons to take to the streets.
“With our ‘decree’ 20 years after the Chernobyl meltdown we will collate minutely our arguments against the use of atomic energy and against the condition of police occupation of the Wendland. All incidents described can be verified beyond doubt, often ‘unsuspicious’ institutions such as ministries or courts are our crown witnesses.
“For almost 30 there’s been an evil farce perpetrated in Gorleben by the energy industry and politicians. Here, among the ‘dumb farmers’ in the thinly populated area between the Elbe and Drawehn, the energy supply enterprises want to bury their poisonous radioactive waste as cheaply as possible.
“We won’t have it! We are fighting for the health and future of our children and children’s children! It will be laughter that vanquishes them! "
Republik Freies Wendland - Das Volk. On behalf of: BI Umweltschutz Lüchow-
Dannenberg e.V., Bäuerliche Notgemeinschaft.
(The decree in full at  http://www.castor.de/aktionen/2006/allgvfg.html)
Press spokesman Francis Althoff 0061 5843 986789 Drawehner Str. 3 29439 Lüchow Tel: 05841-4684 Fax: 3197
bi-presse@t-online.de
www.bi-luechow-dannenberg.de
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